Washington, December 09: A rift between the US and Japan over the future of an American military base in Okinawa is deepening, as the media has been told that talks on relocating the base have been suspended.
In a press conference on Tuesday, Japan’s foreign minister, Katsuya Okada, offered no reason for the suspension of a working group to discuss a 2006 deal to move the Marine Corps air station at Futenma to a less populated part of Okinawa.
Relations between the two sides “are somewhat shaky,” Okada told reporters, adding that “it shouldn’t be that way.”
“The biggest priority for the Japanese side is to reduce burdens on the people of Okinawa,” he said at a news conference.
Meanwhile, major Japanese newspapers, citing unnamed sources within the Tokyo government, said that negotiations on the issue had at least temporarily broken down.
A spokesman for the US Embassy in Tokyo declined to comment on the reported suspension of bilateral talks.
The halt in the sensitive talks is considered as a sign of renewed disagreement over an issue that has come to dominate an increasingly rocky relationship between the two countries.
The report means that the newly elected government of Japan is uncomfortable with the military footprint of the United States. Most of the 36,000 US military personnel in Japan are based in Okinawa.
Earlier in December, the US envoy to Japan called for a resolution of the military base rift by year’s-end.
“I do think it’s important that … we resolve the current issue expeditiously,” US Ambassador to Japan John Roos said.
Tokyo is under pressure from Washington to implement a 2006 Japan-US deal, under which the military base would be replaced by a new one to be built elsewhere on the southern island of Okinawa.
Local residents of Okinawa have been angered by crimes
—–Agencies